A decade of hotel catering and conventions, warts and all

A decade is plenty of time in the hotel catering and conventions business. The review published by eHotelier Insights leaves a balance sheet with three clearly different legs: menu personalisation as the new standard, technology that has eased the running of ballrooms and bookings, and an ugly side the sector still drags unresolved. On the good side, personalisation stopped being a high-end extra and became a baseline expectation for the organiser. On the bad side, the shortage of skilled kitchen and setup staff keeps squeezing margins and timelines. On the ugly side, hidden fees in event contracts, the kind the client only spots at the end and that poison the commercial relationship.

My read is simple. Technology no longer sets anyone apart, nearly everyone has it. What separates a hotel that fills its ballrooms from one with half-empty ones is budget transparency and the ability to retain floor and kitchen talent. In events, trust gets signed before the contract does.

The opportunity for hoteliers is clear: audit the convention department's cost structure, strip out surprise line items and turn them into closed packages. The organiser comparing three proposals appreciates it, and comes back. Ten years on, hotel catering is still a people business, not just menus and screens.